Punjab wins national award in healthcare

Punjab has been awarded the Dataquest-CMR e-Readiness-2013 Gold Award for e-governance impact on improving healthcare service delivery and highest reduction in maternal and infant mortality rate.

Stating this on Friday, an official spokesman said the special secretary and director, governance reforms, VN Zade received the award at a function in New Delhi recently.

Former union secretary, department of information technology and telecommunications, and designated president of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) R Chandrasekhar conferred the award.

The spokesman said the award had been given to Punjab for registering remarkable performance in improvement of healthcare service delivery and its impact on reduction in female and infant mortality rates. He added that the national planning commission on IMR (infant mortality rate) and MMR (maternal mortality rate) had released the data for 29 states, comparing the figures for 2006-07 and 2011-12.

On the basis of this data, the states with the highest drop in IMR and MMR won the awards for best healthcare service delivery. He said Punjab had reduced IMR and MMR by 34% from 50 per 1,000 live births in 2006-07 to 33 per 1,000 live births during 2011-12.